CHINA - A Chinese website called Tencent displayed a web page titled "Epidemic Situation Tracker," briefly showing data on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China that was much higher than official estimates, before suddenly switching to lower numbers multiple times, Taiwan News reported. Over the weekend on February 1st, the Tencent web page showed another mix up of statistics listing confirmed cases of the Wuhan virus in China at 154,023, 10 times the official figure at the time. It also listed the number of suspected cases as 79,808, four times the official figure at the time, while the number of cured cases was only 269, well below the official number that day of 300. Further, the death toll listed was a shocking 24,589, vastly higher than the 300 officially listed that day.

UK - The UK decided to allow tech company Huawei to be involved in the development of its 5G cellphone network last week, following threats by the US that a post-Brexit trade deal would be untenable if the Chinese firm was given access. A conversation between US President Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly became heated over the United Kingdom's decision to allow Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to have a role in the UK's new 5G network last Tuesday.

USA - US Attorney General William Barr said on Thursday the United States and its allies should consider the highly unusual step of taking a “controlling stake” in Finland’s Nokia and Sweden’s Ericsson to counter China-based Huawei’s dominance in next-generation 5G wireless technology. “We and our closest allies certainly need to be actively considering this approach,” he added at the event hosted by Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Both firms have a combined market capitalization of about $50 billion and it is not clear what source of funds the US government could potentially tap to take stakes in the firms or if foreign regulators would approve. Ericsson declined to comment, while Nokia did not immediately comment. The companies’ shares edged higher in European trading after Barr’s comments .

GERMANY - The maneuvering found Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives voting with the rival Alternative for Germany, raising alarms that they had violated a taboo among mainstream parties against working with the far right. The reaction was fast and furious. “A pact with fascism,” one headline screamed. Another gasped about “a coup.” Protesters gathered spontaneously in major cities across the country, chanting anti-fascist slogans. Even the chancellor weighed in from afar during a visit to South Africa: “It was a bad day for democracy,” she said darkly. Three years after the Alternative for Germany became the first far-right party to enter Germany’s national parliament since World War II, the events underscored how the country’s beleaguered traditional parties are still struggling to deal with the new disruptive force.

CHINA - The Coronavirus is wreaking havoc in China, not only with the people suffering and dying, but also with its economy and political system. Everything that Technocrats had hoped to achieve with China, is now on its own deathbed with irregular heart beat. Mind you, China has worked hard since 1976 to establish itself as the world’s first completely Technocratic state. That’s 44 years engineered economics, social control and outward expansion through the Belt and Road trade network.

EUROPE - French party leader Marine Le Pen has predicted more countries are likely to follow Britain out of the EU, as she took aim at Brussels for its punishing approach to Brexit. Marine Le Pen warned the EU faces “other countries leaving” the bloc if it refuses to change after Brexit. The French far-right leader added the EU has more to lose on Brexit than the UK. She remarked Europe still felt like a prison, as Ms Le Pen pointed to the “real contempt” shown from the Brussels elite towards the UK during the three years of negotiations. Ms Le Pen told EuroNews: “Now there are options - the EU can understand that there is a big problem and stop moving towards failure. The EU could listen to the people and participate in the creation of this European alliance of nations that we would like to build. Or the EU will continue to not accept reality and other countries will leave the EU. It’s a certainty.”

VATICAN - Pope Francis has denounced the “evil” of gender theory in a new book, saying the ideology seeks to erase all differences between men and women. Gender theory is “dangerous,” the pope continued, because it implicitly wishes “to destroy at the root that creative project that God wanted for each of us — diversity and distinction — by making everything homogeneous and neutral.” “It is an attack on difference, on God’s creativity, on man and woman,” Francis said. “If I say this clearly, it is not to discriminate against anyone, but simply to warn everyone of the temptation of falling into the foolish project of the inhabitants of Babel: doing away with differences to seek a single language, a single form, a single people.”

AUSTRALIA - Australians are bracing for a "border-to-border" weekend downpour as severe flood warnings have been issued in New South Wales. The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) issued a severe weather warning for heavy rain and powerful winds from Goulburn to the Queensland border today. BOM duty forecaster Jane Golding said there was a chance this weather system could turn into an east coast low over the next two days. This would be extremely dangerous. She said: “Bridges have been washed away … there are some really awful events that have happened from east coast lows.” This has come after widespread flash flooding occurred in coastal areas this week. Byron Bay recorded 280mm of rain and Coffs Harbour was soaked with 250mm overnight. Several roads in Sydney have been closed due to flooding.

GERMANY - Germans are demanding their own Brexit - dubbed ‘Dexit' - as Deutschland politicians are battling tirelessly to follow Britain's lead to quit the EU as a matter of urgency. Berlin’s right-wing populist AfD party leader Björn Höcke and MEP Beatrix von Storch are in the process of selling Dexit to the rest of the party in order to use it as the main feature of their manifesto in the next election. Mr Höcke said: “The majority of the German people also want to get out of EU slavery.” He made a speech as he watched the celebrations in London at 11pm on Brexit Day. At the AfD European Election Party Conference in early 2019, Mr Gauland also issued a stark warning. He said: “Whoever is playing with the idea of a Dexit has to to face the question, it is not a utopia and should we not be more realistic.” He also blamed the concept of Dexit on the party’s dire election result that saw them plummet to 11 percent.

GERMANY - ‘Taboo gone’: Ruling coalition in Germany shaken by fresh crisis after Merkel’s CDU breaks ranks on not cooperating with AfD. Germany’s Christian Democrats – the ruling party of Angela Merkel – have found themselves in a fresh crisis after members in the state of Thuringia defied ‘recommendations’ to avoid working with the anti-establishment AfD party. The political mayhem stems from the election in eastern Germany's Thuringia region last October, when the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) more than doubled its support and came in second after the ruling Left Party. Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), on the other hand, was left red-faced, losing 13 seats in the regional parliament and finishing third. The move instantaneously sent shockwaves across Germany, creating a rift between Thuringia's CDU branch and its leadership in Berlin. CDU's chief and Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer accused her colleagues of breaking rank by violating the party's usual policy of avoiding any cooperation with the anti-establishment and anti-migrant AfD.

USA - Over the past two weeks of coronavirus headlines and heightened global anxiety, along with impeachment coverage and after over the Super Bowl weekend Americans huddled in living rooms in blissful oblivion, a story which in more normal times would be front and center has gone largely unnoticed. To be sure, the Pentagon couldn't be happier that this bombshell has taken a back burner in global headlines: The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone — a total that’s larger than the entire US economy and underscores the Defense Department’s continuing difficulty in balancing its books. The latest estimate is up from $30.7 trillion in 2018 and $29 trillion in 2017, the first year adjustments were tracked in a concerted way, according to Pentagon figures and a lawmaker who’s pursued the accounting morass. Naturally, the first and only question we should start with is: how is this even possible?

USA - Nigel Farage met President Donald Trump Thursday evening at the White House, prompting him to observe “there should be great things ahead for our two countries.” The Brexit veteran revealed the visit to the Oval Office where he had a “great meeting” with President Trump amid a week of meetings and events in the United States for the British political trailblazer. In a note of optimism — common to both the Brexit leader and President Trump, who frequently speaks about his hope for a strong trade deal between the UK and the US in the new post-Brexit world — Mr Farage concluded: “there should be great things ahead for our two countries.”

USA - Emboldened US president shatters customary bipartisan veneer at National Prayer Breakfast, lashing ‘dishonest and corrupt people’ in first comments since acquittal. US President Donald Trump unleashed his fury against those who tried to remove him from office at a prayer breakfast Thursday, a day after his acquittal by the Senate in his impeachment trial. Speaking from a stage where he was joined by congressional leaders, including Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who led the impeachment charge against him, Trump shattered the usual veneer of bipartisanship at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. “As everybody knows, my family, our great country and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” Trump said at the annual event. His airing of grievances came hours before he was to deliver a formal response to the impeachment vote at the White House.

USA - You want to know about the state of our union? It’s downright scary. Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

SOUTH AFRICA - German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with President Cyril Ramaphosa in Pretoria on Thursday 6 February, lending him her country’s powerful – and badly-needed – support at a precarious moment in his efforts to reform South Africa’s economy and polity. For Ramaphosa, the endorsement of the leader of Europe’s most powerful economy is very important, particularly in his drive, launched in 2018, to boost investment by $100-billion in the five years to 2023. Conversely for Germany, which has more than 600 companies and hundreds of millions of euros invested in this country, and which exported about R127-billion worth of goods to South Africa in the year ending November 2019, the success of Ramaphosa’s reforms is not just a matter of altruistic concern about South Africa’s future but also of vital self-interest.